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Villard, Oswald Garrison

Villard, Oswald Garrison, 1872–1949, American editor and author, b. Wiesbaden, Germany, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1893 M.A., 1896). The son of Henry Villard and the grandson, on his mother's side, of William Lloyd Garrison , he was a lifelong liberal and a pacifist. In 1897 he became an editorial writer on the New York Evening Post and after inheriting the paper from his father was its editor until he sold it in 1918. He retained its weekly edition, the Nation, and as its editor made it a leading liberal journal he sold it in 1932, remaining as publisher and contributor until 1935, but finally severed all connections when the Nation became nonpacifist in 1940. His writings include John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After (1910), Newspapers and Newspaper Men (1923), and an autobiography, The Fighting Years (1939).